BR 
326 
.B58 
1883 


'^ 


J.B.    Bittinger 


Martin  Luther  -^ 


€/ 


^?^ 


BR  326  .B58  1883 
Bittinger,  J.  B.  1823-1885 
Martin  Luther 


MARTIN  LUTHER 


AN   ADDRESS 


DELIVERED    IN    THE 


CF:NTRAL    PRESBYTERIAN   CHURCH, 
Allegheny,  Pa.,  Nov.  9,   1883, 


J.  B.  BITTINGER,  D.  D., 

PASTOR  OF  THE  PRESBYTERLAN  CHURCH, 
SEWICKLY,   PA. 


fPHONOGKAI'MED   BY   THE    Rev.    E.    P.    HaWES.] 


CLEVELAND  : 

WILLIAM   W.    WILLIAMS, 

H^ 


IV  W  25  1925 

MARTIN  LUTHER. 


AN   ADDRESS 


DELIVERED    IN   THE 


CENTRAL   PRESBYTERIAN   CHURCH, 
Allegheny,  Pa.,  Nov.  9,  1883, 


J.  B,  BITTINGER,  D.  D„ 

PASTOR  OF  THE  PRESBYTERIAN  CHURCH, 
SEWICKLY,   PA. 


[Phonographed  by  the  Rev.  E.  P.  Hawes.] 


cle:veland  : 

WILLIAM   W.    WILLIAMS, 
1883. 


Christian  friends  and  fellow-citizens  : 

In  consenting  to  speak  to  you  this  evening, 
on  the  subject  assigned  me  by  the  Presbytery — 
Martin  Luther — I  confess  to  a  sudden  feeHng  of  re- 
sponsibiHty.  I  ask  myself  this  simple  question  : 
what  would,  you  if  your  character  were  to  be  tra- 
versed to-night — what  would  you  want  the  man 
who  spoke  about  you  to  say  ?     I  answer  : 

Speak  of  me  as  I  am  ;  nothing  extenuate, 
Nor  set  down  aught  in  malice — 

Now,  though  Martin  Luther  is  dead,  his  name 
lives,  and  he  has  a  reputation  ;  and  he  has  a  repu- 
tation not  to  be  misrepresented,  but  to  be  drawn, 
if  drawn  at  all,  as  it  was,  for  I  believe  that  he  had 
the  courage  in  this  respect  of  Cromwell,  that  if  he 
had  a  mole  on  his  face,  he  wanted  the  artist  to  put 
the  mole  into  the  picture,  and  yet  he  did  not  wish 
to  be  stained  with  false  colors.  It  is  really  a  very 
serious  thing  to  undertake  to  speak  about  one's 
neighbor — about  the  dead — -a.  man,  over  whose 
grave  and  work  there  have  been  great  controver- 
sies— controversies  that  interest  every  one  of  us. 
But,  while  I  think  the  vmdertaking  is  serious,  and 
difficult,  my  mind  is  thoroughly  resolved  that,  I 
shall  deal  honestly  with  the  subject,  according  to 
my  knowledge  of  it. 

However,  I  am  embarrassed  by  another  consid- 
eration, and    yet   it  is  not  altogether  a  disadvan- 


— 4— 

tage  ;  strange  enough  the  pubHc  press  has  taken  up 
wonderfully  with  this  topic.  They  have  favored  us 
with  articles  longer  and  shorter  on  the  great  re- 
former ;  they  have  summarized  his  character  and 
his  life  ;  they  have  been  carried,  by  their  enthus- 
iasm, beyond  their  wonted  descriptions,  and  given 
us  illustrated  papers  on  this  theme.  Now,  there  is 
about  this  very  diffusion  of  a  knowledge  of  the 
facts  concerning  Luther,  the  embarrassment  to 
which  I  refer :  ' '  for,  what  can  the  man  do  that 
cometh  after  the  king?  Even  that  which  hath 
already  been  done":  and  the  press  is  King.  Every- 
thing has  been  said,  and  though,  if  I  were  to  say 
it  for  the  first  time,  it  would  interest  you  and  in- 
struct, for  the  tale  is  marvelous  ;  but  now  it  has 
been  rubbed  so  threadbare  by  repetition  that,  when 
I  touch  upon  the  facts  which  you  know,  I  am 
afraid  you  won't  give  them  the  weight  and  credit 
which  belong  to  them  as  facts,  because,  forsooth, 
you  have  already  seen  all  this  in  the  daily  papers. 
Well,  I  will  run  the  risk  of  telling  the  story 
over  again,  and  I  shall  address  myself  to  those, 
who,  perhaps,  from  the  multitude  of  their  daily 
cares,  have  not  time  even  to  read  the  newspaper  : 
the  busy  housewife,  who  has  too  much  to  do  after 
breakfast  and  before  also,  to  turn  to  this  monitor, 
adviser  and  historian  ;  and  the  business  man,  more 
bent  on  the  prices  current,  and  the  ledger  in  fact, 
than  on  "lives  of  great  men," — if  he  has  commit- 
ted himself  to  this    place,  I  trust,    I   may  speak  a 


— 5— 

word  that  shall  be  to  the  honor  of  Luther  and  to 
the  edification  and  entertainment  of  this  hearer 
also. 

Martin  Luther  was  born  at  Eisleben,  November 
lO,  1483.  His  parents  were  emphatically  poor 
and  pious,  and  that  is  a  great  heritage  to  be  born 
to.  The  regimen  of  the  house  was  strict.  It  was 
the  day  when  the  commandment  "Honor  thy 
father  and  mother"  ranked  equally  with  all  the 
other  stately  commandments,  and  when  it  spoke,  it 
spoke  with  authority.  It  was  the  day,  moreover, 
when  faith  in  the  saying  of  Solomon  :  "  He  that 
spareth  his  rod  hateth  his  son  ;  but  he  that  loveth 
him  chasteneth  him  betimes,'  had  not  yet  died  out, 
or  altogether  faded  into  "moral  suasion." 

Amid  the  harsh  traditions  and  habits  which,  had 
grown  up  under  this  reading  of  the  word  of  God, 
Luther  as  a  child  had  hard  fare,  especially,  because 
he  had  a  hard  father.  Not  that  his  father  had  no 
affections,  for  a  man  may  have  strong  affections, 
and  yet  his  passions  may  be  so  turbulent,  and  his 
convictions  of  duty  so  indurated,  that,  against  his 
own  flesh  and  blood,  from  a  sense  of  duty  to  God's 
law,  he  may  harden  his  heart  ;  and  besides,  the 
poor  boy  Martin  was  born  with  a  large  heritage  of 
his  father's  temper  and  temperament.  He  was 
one  of  those  boys  whom  you  can  thrash  and  thrash 
again,  but  whom  you  cannot  subdue,  your  passion 
simply  kindles  the  fire  of  his  passions,  and  he 
would  die,  rather  than  seem   to  yield.      It    was    a 


— 6— 

sad  heritage  for  the  boy,  it  made  his  Hfe  at  home  a 
constant  terror  to  himself,  and  a  constant  torture. 
Many  a  night  would  he  creep  stealthily  to  his  bed 
in  the  loft— for    that   was    the   connnon    sleeping- 
place— and  in  the  cold  and  dark    of  that  garret, 
would   shudder    at    the  thought,    that    his   father 
might  ask  for  him— and  come  for  him  ;  and  yet  the 
father,  with  all   his  sternness,  when   he  did  climb 
into  that  garret,  to  know  what  had  become  of  his 
truant  boy,  when  he  came  to  the  cot,  yielding  to 
softer  impulses,  could  kneel  down,  and  could  pray 
for  that  boy,  as  only  a  father  can  pray  for  a  child. 
And  when  this  boy  went  to  school   it  was  with 
him,  probably,  as   it    was   Avith    Edward    Everett, 
who,  speaking  on  the  subject  of  education  in  our 
schools,  said  he  belonged  to  the  "  flogged  genera- 
tion."     Luther  lived  in    an  age  when    everybody 
was    born    in    that    generation.       They    were    all 
flogged  !     The   traditions   of  such  school-keeping 
have  come  down  to  our  own  times,  at  least  to  my 
recollection  ;  though  it  may  not  rain  floggings  as 
plentifully   now,    as  it  did  when   the  boy  Luther, 
according    to    his    own     statement,    was    flogged 
fifteen  times  in  one  day  !      I  don't  know  what  else 
the  teacher  did  on  that  day,  unless  it  was  flogging! 
Fifteen  floggings  because  a   boy  didn't  know  his 
accidents,  or  for  some  other  fault  in  his  learning. 
This  was  the  atmosphere   of  the  school.      It  was 
rigorous  ;   it  was  cheerless  ;    it  was  to  sensitive  na- 
tures  terrific.     But  Luther  was  sturdy   as  a  boy, 


and  he  was  sturdy  through  his  Hfe.  He  was  none 
of  your  whimpering,  whining  boys  or  men,  who 
wished  to  make  an  apology  for  sharing  the  com- 
mon lot  of  men  or  boys,  or  who  thought  that  he 
was  dealt  with  more  harshly  than  anyone  else. 
He  suffered  such  things,  and  he  got  the  interpre- 
tation of  them  in  these  words:  "It  is  well  to 
bear  the  yoke  in  one's  youth."  There  were  many 
days  and  years  coming,  when  the  floggings  of 
home  and  school  were  but  the  thinnest  vapor 
compared  with  those  dark  clouds,  which  gathered 
later  into  great  tempests,  from  which  the  thunders 
roared  like  ten  thousand  beasts  of  prey,  and  light- 
nings flashed  that  made  men's  souls  quiver;  but 
the  boy  that  could  not  be  flogged  out  of  his  con- 
victions, could  not,  as  a  man,  be  scared  out  of  his 
convictions  either.  He  was  made  of  good  timber 
and  it  would  take  great  storms  to  break  or  founder 
that  vessel. 

In  due  time  Martin  was  sent  from  home  to  fur- 
ther his  education.  He  went  away  because  there 
were  no  good  schools  at  Eisleben,  and  because,  as 
a  charity  scholar,  as  a  singing  boy,  he  might  pos- 
sibly pick  up  a  precarious  living  by  chanting  and 
begging;  for  that  was  a  part  of  school  discipline, 
and  so  he  spent,  after  he  had  reached  the  age  of 
fourteen,  a  year  at  Magdeburg.  Then  he  came  back, 
and  with  the  ambitious  purpose  of  his  father 
went  to  Eisenach,  where  there  was  a  better  chance 
for  singing,  and  a  chance  for  getting  a  better  edu- 


— 8— 

cation  for  singing,  and  where,  it  seems,  moreover, 
he  had  a  relative,   but  a   relative  of  such   a   hard 
and  close  nature  that  the  boy  was  like  to  starve  on 
the  relationship.      But  God,  who  has  his  own  way 
of  providing  food  for  the  ravens,  did  not  fail   the 
child    whom    he   was  bringing  up.     Whatever   it 
may  have  been  in  the  life   of  Luther,    whether  it 
was  an  accident,  or  a  part   of  the  mysterious  rule 
of  a  divine  providence  ;  as  he  was   following  his 
singing  vocation  through  the  town,    his   voice  at- 
tracted the  notice,  which  afterwards  procured  him 
the  patronage    of  Dame  Cotta,   a   woman,   doubt- 
less, who  was  the  portraiture  of  what  Luther  says 
is    the   noblest    conception    of  which  the   human 
soul  can  lay  hold.     "There  is  nothing  sweeter  on 
earth  than  the  heart  of  a  woman   in   which   pity 
dwells. "     He  sang  and  her  heart  was  touched,  and 
from  that  hour,   she  took  him  to   her  own  home, 
and  in  that  house  he  had  enough  to  eat,  and  there 
received  that  part  of  his  training,  which  I  am  afraid 
the  narrow  circumstances,  and  the  hard  lot  of  home 
did  not  permit  him  to  pick  up.    That  is:  a  little  of 
the  siiaviter  in  modo — a   little   bit  of  that   culture, 
which  rubs    down    the   exterior  roughness  of  all 
men,  but  especially  as  it  was  necessary  it  should 
be  rubbed  down  in  the  case  of  Luther,  and  which 
worked  in  upon  his  nature  and  developed  the  best 
parts  of  it — for  his  was  emphatically  a   soul  that 
opened  up  to  kindness, — that  unfolded  its   better 
self  to  the  gentle  touch  of  a  sympathetic  woman. 


— 9— 

After  spending  four  years  at  Eisenach,  he  passes 
on  to  Erfurt,  then  the  most   distinguished   school 
of  law  in    Germany — since  then    gone   to   decay. 
There  it  was  his  purpose — his  father's  particularly, 
as  it  was  a  famous  law  school — that  he  should  prose- 
cute studies  for   the   law.     While   here,    he   made 
that    discovery,    which    has    since    been  heralded 
through  all  Protestantism,  in  the  form  of  a  legend, 
concerning  the  Bible.      Now,  my  christian  friends, 
Luther  was  not  born  a  heathen.      He  was  brought 
up  in  a  Christian  family.     He  had  often  listened  to 
the  voice  of  the  psalms  in  the  breviary.      He  had 
heard  the  sound  of  the  scriptures  in  the  daily   les- 
sons.   Doubtless  he  had  heard  them  at  home.     But 
when  he  opened  the  Bible,  he  found  that  here,  in- 
stead of  a  few  grains  of  gold   from   the  washings 
of  the  river  of  truth,  there  was  a  solid  mass  of  the 
precious  metal  refined,  and  free  for  any  one  to  take, 
what  each  one  wished.      To   find,   that  beside  the 
scripture  lessons  of  the  day,    and   the  scraps  that 
were  patched  upon  the  sermons,   here   was   every 
word   that    had    proceeded    out  of  the  mouth  of 
God, — that  was  the  discovery. 

But  to  a  man  or  a  boy  who  was  hungry;  to  one 
who  was  looking  for  knowledge ;  to  a  youth  whose 
heart  had  already  opened  up,  in  some  measure,  to 
these  things,  this  was  indeed  a  discovery!  He 
was  led  on  from  one  step  to  another,  his  religious 
convictions  growing  deeper  and  deeper,  until  at 
last  it  seems  that  Luther  had  nothing  to  think  of, 


— 10 — 

but  Luther  as  a  miserable  sinner  ;  as  a  man,  who 
desired  pardon,  and  yet  knew  not  where  to  go  for 
it ;  as  a  man  laboring  with  the  greatest  of  all  hu- 
man problems  ?  "how  shall  the  sinner  be  just  with 
God?"  At  this  problem  he  worked  honestly, 
prayerfully,  tearfully.  Led  along  in  the  way  in 
which  God  leads  that  kind  of  soul,  until  at  last 
driven  by  conscience,  driven  by  fear,  driven  by  the 
sound  of  hell,  which  rumbled  in  the  distance,  and 
echoed  in  his  poor  soul, — whither  should  he  flee? 
Where  was  the  shadow  of  the  great  rock  in  the 
w^eary  land  of  this  man's  pilgrimage  ?  Where 
could  such  a  one  go,  in  that  day,  if  he  did  not  take 
refuge  in  a  monastery?  These  little  places,  that 
the  church  of  the  middle  ages,  had  built;  these 
houses  of  refuge,  refection  and  reflection  ;  choice 
spots  guarded  by  angels,  and  where  men,  under 
vows  of  poverty,  obedience  and  chastity,  absorbed 
in  these  things,  separated  from  the  world,  should 
give  themselves  to  prayer, and  "lay  up  in  store  for 
themselves  a  good  foundation  against  the  time  to 
come,  that  they  might  lay  hold  of  eternal  life." 
He  could  not  help  himself 

•  Where,  think  you,  would  a  man  go  now,  who  is 
tempest-tossed  and  troubled  in  respect  to  his  salva- 
tion? Where  but  to  some  house  of  prayer,  hop- 
ing that  some  one  could  speak  to  him  "all  the 
words  of  this  life."  Against  his  father's  wish, 
(but  he  had  now  reached  his  majority)  against  his 
father's  protests,  actually  incurring  disinheritance, 


— II — 

he  goes  into  a  monastery,  to  be  a  man  of  prayer, 
to  be  that,  which  we,  in  our  rabid  Protestantism, 
have  learned  to  despise  under  the  term  of  "  monk." 
There  were  all  sorts  of  monks  in  that  day,  and 
Luther  was  of  such  a  sort  that,  if  the  world  and 
the  monasteries  had  been  filled  with  his  kind, 
there  would  have  been  no  Reformation,  we  should 
have  needed  none. 

Here  the  man  worked  in  the  same  line  with  the 
spirit  of  God,  and  the  word  of  God.  After  making 
distinguished  progress,  in  these  studies  and  others, 
he  was  called  from  there  to  lecture  in  the  new 
university  on  philosophy  and  physics — two  sub- 
jects about  as  remote  from  that  which  then  en- 
gaged his  heart,  as  you  can  imagine  any  two  sub- 
jects, to  be.  But  this,  also,  was  a  preparation  for 
other  things  yet  to  come.  And  so  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Wittenberg,  established  to  gratify  the 
pride  of  the  elector  Frederick,  the  Wise,  of  Sax- 
ony, a  university  not  under  the  supervision  and 
control  of  the  Pope,  and  therefore  not  bound  by 
the  fetters  of  traditions,  which  emanated  from 
Rome ;  but  a  new  university  on  a  new  model, 
and  which  was  underlaid  by  the  Bible  as  the 
book  which  was  to  be  taught.  And  thus  the  man 
who  had  discovered  the  whole  Bible  for  himself, 
and  who  had  found,  in  its  words,  comfort  for  his 
soul,  found  that  very  book  at  the  foundation  of  the 
University  to  which  he  was  called. 

After  laboring  there  a  short   time  in   the  philo- 


12 

sophical  departments,  he  became  a  teacher  of 
theology,  and  the  very  first  thing  that  he  comes  to' 
is  the  Bible  itself.  He  opens  up  the  Book  of 
God.  He  begins  on  the  Psalms — the  deepest,  and 
sweetest  and  most  human  of  all  the  books  of  the 
Old  Testament ;  the  book,  in  which  the  souls  of 
godly  men,  exposed  to  the  sunshine  of  divine 
favor,  have  exhaled  as  the  flowers  do— their  best 
essences.  In  these  Psalms,  God's  saints  of  old  de- 
canted their  inmost  spirit  of  joy  and  sorrow.  And 
out  of  these  deep  "wells  of  salvation,"  Luther  drew 
supplies  for  himself,  and  supplies  for  his  hearers. 
Then,  stepping  out  of  the  old  covenant,  we  next 
find  him  expounding  Galatians  and  Romans — Gal- 
atians  being  as  it  were  an  abridgement  of  Romans  ; 
a  sort  of  short  Roman  sword  that  could  not  be 
broken,  and  which  the  soldier  could  use  even  after 
being  bent  under  his  shield,  and,  on  his  knees. 
That  short,  decisive,  clear  utterance  in  respect  to 
the  great  question:  ''How  should  man  be  just 
with  God  ?"  That  was  his  New  Testament  book. 
That  was  the  book  which  he  affectionately  called 
by  the  name"  of  his  wife,  ''Meine  Kaethe  von 
Bora,"  so  dear  was  it  to  him.  It  contained  the 
whole  marrow  of  the  gospel,  and  into  it  he  poured 
all  his  experience,  as  he  then  had  it. 

I  think,  however,  if  you  were  to  read  his  com- 
mentary on  Galatians,  you  would  find  a  great  deal 
more  of  the  Pope  wrought  into  it  than  you  might 
think    necessary    to    explain    it.      But    you    must 


~i3— 

not  forget    that    the    Pope    stood    very    close    to 
Luther's    eyes ;    and   if  his    hoHness   had   been    a 
smaller  man  than   the   Pope  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury was,  he  would  have  obscured  a  great  many 
things,  and  would   have  seemed  very  large.      But, 
my  hearers,  you  must  also  remember  that  the  Pope 
represented  all  the  power  that  God  had  delegated 
to  man  upon  the  earth.      Kings  were  not  simply 
his  counsellors  ;  they  were  his   servants  ;  and  all 
the  hierarchy  flowed  down  from  him,   as  a  stream 
flows  from  its  spring,  in  the  mountains.      He  was 
the    fountain   of   all    honor,    of  all  power,    of  all 
knowledge.      He  spake  the  last  word,  and  sealed 
it  with  his  own    infallibility  ! — not  then  a  declared 
article  of  faith,    but  yet    implicitly  held.      There- 
fore,   that  the  Pope  appears  on  every  page,    and 
seems  to  be  the  great  antithesis  to  what  Luther  is 
expounding,  the  background  of  everything  which 
he  explains,  will  not  seem  strange,  when  you  ' '  put 
yourself  in  his  place." 

This  m^an  works  on.  He  is  an  indefatigable 
worker,  a  veritable  Titan.  His  working  power 
is  simply  incredible.  It  is  indescribable.  It  is 
almost  inconceivable,  when  I  tell  you  that  he 
lectured  every  day  ;  that  often  he  preached  every 
day,  and,  on  some  occasions,  three  times  a  day,  and 
that  he  combined  with  this  a  correspondence, 
which  was  immense, — filling  chairs,  tables  and  floor 
with  unanswered  letters  ;  also  the  entertainment 
of  his  friends,  for  he  laid  a   hospitable  table,   and 


—14— 

his  going  upon  public  errands  of  every  sort.  He 
had  work  enough  to  do  for  a  half  dozen  clerks 
and  as  many  amanuenses.  In  a  single  year  he 
put  out  one  hundred  and  eighty  publications, — one 
every  other  day  ;  and  such  was  the  demand  on 
his  time,  and  such  was  his  response  to  it  by  his 
industry,  that  he  just  swept  like  a  strong  swim- 
mer everything  before  him,  and  made  his  way 
through  it.  I  don't*  wonder  that  he  was  always 
sick.  I  do  not  recall  a  single  public  errand  upon 
which  he  went  that  he  was  not  taken  so  sick  while 
he  was  going,  or  while  he  was  there,  or  while 
coming  back,  that  they  hardly  knew  what  to  do 
with  him.  He  was  taken  sick  at  Bologna  when 
he  returned  from  his  pilgrimage  to  Rome.  Sick 
at  Eisenach  on  his  way  to  Worms  ;  sick  when  he 
went  to  the  Diet  at  Augsburg,  many  of  these 
spasms,  so  severe  like  the  one  at  Schmalkald,  that 
after  he  got  there,  he  could  not  stay.  So  tor- 
mented was  he  by  his  great  enemies,  vertigo  and 
'  the  stone,'  that  he  had  to  be  carried  home,  by 
easy  stages  to  save  his  life. 

That  man  always  liable  to  be  taken  sick,  and 
doing  all  this  work  ;  he  had  the  working  power 
of  the  steam  engine.  What  gave  him  this  power  ? 
The  conviction  of  duty — so  deep  that  he  could  not 
rest;  and  he  did  not  rest.  So  he  works  on.  He 
infects  men  by  his  example,  throws  his  whole 
heart  out  upon  them.  He  is  not  only  a  man  of 
convictions,  but  his  convictions  are  to  him  a  part  of 


—15— 

himself.  He  is  possessed.  He  has  a  fire  in  his 
bones,  and  woe  to  him  if  he  does  not  let  it  burn 
out.  It  glows  in  his  face.  It  gives  tone  to  his 
voice.  It  kindles  enthusiasm  everywhere,  especi- 
ally in  the  hearts  of  the  students  who  listen  to 
him.  They  flock,  not  simply  from  Germany,  but 
the  name  and  fame  of  Wittenberg  reaches  out, 
and  the  bruit  of  it  is  heard  away  over  in  the 
Netherlands,  up  to  the  Baltic,  down  to  the  Adri- 
atic, and  across  the  seas,  in  England  and  in  Scot- 
land. From  all  countries  came  students,  Bible  in 
hand,  to  sit  at  the  feet  of  this  wonderful  man, 
who  explains  God's  word.  Four  hundred  stu- 
dents crowd  into  his  lecture-room  to  hear  him. 
Wittenberg  overflows  with  students — cannot 
lodge  all  of  them  in  houses,  and  puts  up  tents,  I 
believe.  The  little  church  in  which  he  preaches 
is  soon  too  small.  There  must  be  church  exten- 
sion, and  he  must  be  promoted  to  a  place  that  is 
large  enough  to  hold  the  eager  multitudes  that 
hang  upon  his  lips.  So  he  becomes  the  city  pas- 
tor of  Wittenberg. 

He  does  not  speak  to  the  people  in  Latin.  He 
is  not  a  scholastic  in  his  methods,  neither  in  his 
illustrations,  much  less  in  his  language.  He  is  a 
German  to  his  heart's  core.  A  plain  peasant's 
son  whose  ancestors,  for  generations  back,  were 
peasants,  and  in  whose  brawn  is  nothing  but 
peasant  blood,  and  whose  blood  was  only  that  of 
sturdy,  honest,  genuine  peasantry ;  he  speaks  his 


— 16— 

mother-tongue,  the  speech  which  always  captures 
the  heart,  and  speaking  in  this  tongue,  (and  no  man 
ever  spoke  his  mother-tongue  better),  we  are  not 
surprised  that  the  '  common  people  heard  him 
gladly.' 

Now  he  rises  up  higher  and  higher,  and  his 
fame  grows  farther  and  farther.  But  he  is  not 
taking  care  of  his  fame.  He  has  too  much  to  do 
to  think  of  what  he  is  doing.  He  is  driven  from 
behind.  He  is  impelled  from  within.  He  is 
lifted  up  from  above,  and  if  you  define  '  enthu- 
siasm '  to  be  'the  God  within  us,'  he  seems  to 
have  the  indwelling  of  divine  power.  When  this 
man  was  wrought  up  so  that  he  brought  out  in 
his  physique,  in  his  pose  and  posture,  what  was  in 
his  soul,  I  do  not  wonder  that  you  find  his  body 
and  head  thrown  backwards,  with  his  hair  like  a 
lion's  mane  streaming  behind,  and  his  high  fore- 
head looking  small  because  of  his  lifted  crest ;  his 
strong  neck  clothed  literally  with  thunder  like 
Job's  war-horse,  and  his  eye — no  man  ever  yet 
was  satisfied  that  he  had  described  it.  To  Kiss- 
ler  he  seemed  falcon-eyed.  Melancthon  thought 
it  was  the  eye  of  a  lion  ;  those  immense  gold 
rings  which  bound  the  pupil,  which  was  dark  as 
night,  and  piercing  as  the  lightning,  looking  right 
into  your  soul — a  man  whose  eyes  terrified 
Cajetan.  He  could  not  understand  these  mar- 
velous orbs  and  penetrating  speculations  which 
lay  at  the  bottom   of  those    "  demonic  eyes,  "  as 


—17- 

Alexander  calls  them,  for  they  are  inexplicable  to 
him  also.  But  this  was  Luther,  and  when  he  was 
thus  stirred  up,  though  only  of  medium  size,  I 
marvel  not  that  he  made  the  impression,  that  he 
was  a  giant,  and  that  when  he  spake,  his  own 
words  were  like  the  words  of  St.  John,  "every 
one  of  which,  he  said,  weighed  three  tons  "  ;  and 
when  he  hurled  them  at  his  opponents,  it  was  as 
when  the  giants  in  Milton  took  up  the  hoary  tops 
of  hills,  and  the  air  was  filled  with  the  elemental 
strife. 

We  follow  this  man  up  yet  higher,  for  he  still 
lives  and  works  unceasingly.  Taking  no  care  of 
his  name  nor  his  fame,  but  God  took  care  of  that ; 
caring  not  for  money,  for  he  never  took  a  cent  for 
preaching  ;  caring  not  for  money,  he  never  got  a 
cent  for  all  his  myriad  publications  ;  caring  not  for 
money,  like  Agassiz,  he  could  not  afford  to  work 
for  money  ;  but  working  on  like  a  slave  with  only 
his  university  salary,  and  the  occasional  presents 
wJiich  the  magnanimity  of  his  public  friends  chose 
to  bestow  upon  him.  And  he  was  rather  chary  of 
presents.  He  knew  the  corrupting  power  even 
of  a  present ;  that  what  people  give  as  a  pledge 
of  affection,  giving  it  regularly  tends  to  corrupt 
the  receiver,  so  that  he  looks  upon  that  as  a  right, 
which  is  only  a  privilege.  Luther  knew  his  own 
heart.      He  knew  all  hearts. 

So  he  kept  working  on,  and  now  his  eyes  begin 
to  take  in  the    poverty  and   wretchedness   of  the 


people  ;  and  like  our  blessed  Saviour  when  he  was 
out  in  desert  places  and  was  done  speaking,  and 
saw  that  the  people  were  weary  and  had  a  long 
way  home,  he  could  not  dismiss  them.  They  had 
listened  to  the  words  of  truth,  but  they  must  also  be 
fed.  So  Luther  saw  the  sheep  '  without  a  shepherd, 
or  a  shepherd  who  was  a  hierlingand  cared  not  for 
the  sheep,'  and  his  honest  heart  bled  for  this  poor 
flock  which  was  bone  of  his  bone  and  flesh  of  his 
flesh. 

And  so  at  last  the  hour  struck  when  a  new  rev- 
elation seemed  to  reach  him.  And  this  was 
the  occasion,  when  the  people  began  to  see  how 
the  prodigality,  if  not  the  profligacy  of  the  popes 
consumed  the  money  which  flowed  in  a  steady 
stream  into  the  papal  treasury.  The  papal  court 
squandered  it  on  magnificent  buildings  and  wasted 
it  in  luxurious  living  ;  they  spent  it  as  extravagant 
men  easily  spend  a  great  deal  of  money,  until  the 
very  sources  from  which  it  came,  in  answer  to 
piety,  seemed  threatening  to  dry  up;  and  the 
more  so,  for  when  the  old  St.  Peter's  was 
pulled  down,  because  it  was  too  little,  and  in  order 
that  the  ambition  of  Julius  II.  might  be  gratified 
by  putting  up  something  worthy  of  the  Christian 
world,  and  worthy  of  St.  Peter  himself,  then  the 
decree  went  forth  that  Rome  and  all  her  wide-ly- 
ing dominions  should  be  taxed ;  and  the  tax  was 
laid  upon  souls.  It  was  the  price  of  sin.  It  was 
the  cost  of  redemption.      France  would  give  noth- 


—  19— 

ing,  for  the  French  king  was  not  on  the  best  of 
terms  with  Ronrje.  England  would  give  nothing. 
Spain  would  give  nothing,  and  there  was  nobody 
left,  but  these  'patient  Dutch, '  who,  then  already  had 
a  reputation  of  submitting  to  a  great  many  heavy 
burdens,  and  not  murmuring ;  who  had  there  puta- 
tion  not  only  of  patience,  but  also  the  reputation 
of  great  piety  and  devoutness,  and  that  whatever 
was  assessed,  Rome  confidently  counted  upon  their 
loyalty  to  pay  it ;  and  so  what  France  w^ould  not 
pay,  and  Spain  would  not  pay,  had  to  be  doubled 
over  and  laid  upon  Germany  ;  her  broad  back  and 
her  subdued  heart  would,  at  least,  attempt  to 
carry  it. 

But  Luther,  educated  now  in  the  doctrine  in 
which  he  himself  had  found  the  peace  of  his  soul 
— that  a  man  is  not  justified  by  works;  that  there 
is  not  this  roundabout  way  to  get  to  Christ, 
through  a  long  process  of  hard,  self-castigation,  self- 
flagellation  ;  doing  works  of  penance  and  sorrow 
for  the  heart  and  the  mind  and  the  body,  but  a 
short  way ;  and  a  direct  vision  and  interview  with 
Christ  himself,  which  was  simply  :  to  trust  God  and 
take  him  at  his  word.  When  God  said,  "Come  to 
me,"  he  meant  that  the  door  was  open  ;  when  God 
said,  "If  a  man  will  forsake  his  sin  and  turn  unto 
the  Lord,  he  will  have  mercy  upon  him  and 
abundantly  bless  him,"  that  was  better  than  a 
bond.  So  when  "the  indulgence  pedlar  Tetzel" 
came    into  his  neighborhood  to  raise  this  tax  by 


— 20 — 

selling  indulgences  for  sins  that  were  past,  and 
sins  that  were  passing,  and  sins  that  were  yet  to 
come,  there  was  a  regular  tariff,  running  from  a 
small  figure  down  as  low  as  a  quarter  of  a  guilder, 
up  to  the  very  handsome  poll-tax  of  twenty-five 
guilders,  then  Luther's  soul  rose  up  in  indigna- 
tion. This  thing  must  not  be.  It  should  not 
come, — into  the  domains  of  his  elector.  It  should 
never  put  its  profane  foot  into  Wittenberg.  It 
should  not  come  within  calling  or  corrupting  dis- 
tance of  where  he  lived,  and  where  the  true  gospel 
was  known.  And  they  didn't  get  nearer,  I  be- 
lieve, than  Jueterbogk,  some  ten  or  twelve  miles 
from  Wittenberg,  and  there  the  curse  was  stayed; 
but  the  men  and  women  from  all  that  region  had 
gone  out  and  bought  these  permits.  Why 
shouldn't  they  ? 

My  hearers,  when  people  are  sick,  there  is  no 
patent  medicine  that  will  not  be  patronized — if  it  is 
in  the  market;  it  does  not  matter,  whether  it  is 
bread  or  sawdust.  When  men  are  sick,  they  want 
to  be  healed ;  sick  men  want  remedies,  and  the 
man  that  stands  at  the  head  of  the  street^and  says, 
"here  is  the  remedy,"  is  the  man  who  will  be 
patronized.  And  these  people  were  sick.  They 
had  an  incurable  disease.  They  knew  that  '  the 
soul  that  sinneth  it  must  die  ;'  and  with  their  theory: 
that  if  they  did  not  die  outright,  and  go  direct  to 
perdition,  it  was  at  best  the  underside  of  Heaven 
—purgatory— that  they  should  have  to  occupy  for 


— 21  — 

an  indefinite  period, — until  touched  by  pity  or 
piety,  the  grace  and  favor  of  their  neighbors,  their 
kindred  or  some  one  else,  should  purchase  their 
liberation. 

They  went  in  crowds.  The  men  of  Jerusalem, who 
went  down  to  John  and  the  Jordan  to  be  baptized 
for  the  remission  of  their  sins,  were  not  more  than 
those  who  streamed  to  Tetzel  and  his  coadjutors, 
and  his  commission  for  raising  this  money — 
to  buy  letters  of  indulgence — free  papers  for  the 
past,  and  good  for  the  future.  They  brought  them 
to  Luther,  and  each  one  that  was  brought  was  like 
so  much  fuel  added  to  the  fire  of  his  indignation. 
He  would  not  receive  them;  he  knew  that  the}^  were 
useless,  that  they  were  false  ;  he  knew  that  all  this 
was  only  an  additional  burden  to  sink  these  poor 
ignorant  souls  still  deeper  into  the  mire. 

Now  then,  as  having  a  heart  for  his  wretched 
countrymen,  for  poor  souls,  if  he  could  do  nothing 
else,  he  could  challenge  their  betrayers,  and  on 
October3ist,  15  17,  he  nailed  his  ninety-five  theses 
to  the  door  of  the  castle  church.  We  have  all  read 
about  those  ninty-five  theses,  and  quite  likely,  if 
we  were  to  read  them,  the  first  impression  on  our 
mind  would  be  that  there  was  an  immense  amount 
of  repetition  in  them,  and  an  immense  amount  of 
subdivision  ;  and  so  there  is,  but  that  was  the 
scholastic  fashion.  It  was  like  those  methods  of 
sermonizing  which  obtained  in  Scotland  one  hund- 
red years  ago,  and  which  still  linger  in  some  conser- 


—  22 — 

vative  pulpits,  when  Erskine,  for  instance,  would 
divide  a  sermon  into  ninty-nine  divisions  and  sub- 
divisions. This  much  dividing  did  not  put  any 
more  gospel  into  a  sermon,  neither,  it  is  to  be 
hoped,  did  it  diminish  the  amount  that  was  in  it, 
and  so  the  nine-five  theses  did  not  increase  the 
amount  of  truth,  nor  did  they  diminish  it.  It  was 
the  scholastic  mode  of  stating  it.  Of  course  they 
were  in  Latin.  The  discussion  was  not  in  a  lan- 
guage which  the  newspaper  reporter  of  that  day, 
if  there  had  been  any,  would  be  able  to  catch  with 
his  pencil,  make  a  rapid  sketch  or  abridgement  of 
it,  and  bring  it  out  in  the  next  edition.  Nothing 
of  that  sort,  it  was  addressed  to  a  very  different 
class  of  people.  Luther  knew  that  a  great  crowd 
was  coming  to  Wittenberg,  of  Catholics,  of  learned 
men,  those  of  the  old  order,  and  he  puts  up  those 
theses,  as  was  customary,  and  said  he  was  willing 
to  debate  them  with  anybody — orally,  or  by  writ- 
ing— anybody  tl^at  would  come  there. 

But  little  did  he  think,  when  he  nailed  up  the 
theses,  what  was  coming.  Next  morning  when  they 
were  seen,  and  the  next  day  and  the  next  week, 
literally,  as  it  was  described  by  a  contemporary,  they 
were  put  on  the  wings  of  angels;  they  cut  the  air 
in  every  direction  ;  they  carried  the  message 
north,  south,  east  and  west,  and  all  Germany  rose 
up  as  one  man.  So  excited  were  they  by  this 
subject  thrown  upon  them.  There  was  a  ripeness 
for  it.      Large  numbers  of  those  people  had  been 


oppressed  in  the  matter  of  indulgences.  They 
felt  it  keenly  at  this  time,  when  they  were  being 
taxed,  terribly  taxed,  for  what  they  had  come  to 
believe  was  a  sham  and  a  falsehood.  The  money 
which  came  so  hard  to  them  was  wasted  in  riotous 
living,  costly  architecture  and  the  Turkish  war,  it 
may  be,  or  what  not.  Fires  were  smouldering  in 
their  souls,  and  the  least  breath  blown  kindled 
them  into  a  blaze.     So  the  work  goes  bravely  on. 

Now  then,  Luther  was  the  only  man  whose 
name  was  known  to  all  Germany,  and  more  than 
that,  the  only  man  whose  name  was  known  to  all 
Christendom.  And  what  should  be  done  with  this 
man?  Will  you  try  him  by  commission?  He 
was  too  large  a  man  foiithat.  And  though  Leo  in 
his  jesting,  easy  way,  a  thousand  miles  off,  could 
say  that  this  was  nothing  but  a  squabble  between 
the  Dominicans  and  the  Augustinians,  and  I  don't 
doubt  there  was  a  good  deal  in  Luther  andTetzel, 
belonging  to  different  fraternities,  which  gave 
greater  zeal  to  Luther  as  well  as  to  other  good 
men — but  Leo  thought  that  was  all  ;  that  it  would 
all  blow  over,  and  soon. 

But  now  it  appeared  that  what  at  first  "arose  as 
a  cloud  like  a- man's  hand"  began  to  cover  the 
whole  northern  hemisphere  and  looked  dark  and 
threatening.  And  so  Luther  is  cited  before  the 
diet,  one  of  those  august  public  meetings,  when 
the  Empire  sat  upon  great  questions  of  state, 
when  the  Emperor  was  there,  when  the  King  was 


—24— 

there,  when  the  electors  were  there  and  the  bish- 
ops and  archbishops,  and  always  a  legate  from 
Rome ;  when  all  that  was  learned  and  impressive 
was  collected  within  some  imperial  palace,  in  some 
free  city  of  Germany.  And  before  such  an  assem- 
bly Luther  is  summoned  to  give- an  account  of 
himself. 

The  poor  man  sets  out,  not  at  his  own  expense. 
I  may  well  say  '  poor.'  He  was  poor  in  money, 
and  he  was  poor  in  other  ways.  But  the  city  of 
Wittenberg  had  a  pride  in  him.  The  city  preacher 
as  he  was,  he  was  well  backed  by  his  fellow- 
citizens.  They  gave  him  a  pass  to  Worms,  and 
on  he  went  by  easy  stages.  It  was  not  the  going 
of  a  common  man.  He  cawie  and  went  'with  ob- 
servation.' And  as  he  traveled  from  Kingdom  to 
Kingdom  the  whole  popultaion  came  out  to  meet 
him,  and  to  greet  him.  So  he  entered  city  after 
city,Leipsic,  Erfurth,  Gotha  and  Frankfort,  preach- - 
ing  as  he  went,  and  calling  louder  and  louder  in  the 
interests  of  reforni — preaching  the  gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ.  His  journey  was  like  a  royal  progress.  Two 
thousand  of  her  citizens  went  forth  of  the  gates 
to  salute  him,  and  when  he  came  to  Worms  the 
whole  city  was  stirred.  The  royal  trumpeter  an- 
nounced his  approach  from  the  cathedral  spire,  and 
amid  the  waving  of  banners,  and  the  shouting  of 
the  multitudes,  this  poor  monk,  with  his  'three 
escorts  from  Wittenberg '  in  a  Dutch  cart,  rode 
into  the  h-ce,    imperial   city   of  Worms.      And  so 


—25— 

crowded,  so  thronged  and  so  tumultuous  was  the 
desire  to  see  him,  that  corridors  and  windows  and 
balconies  and  every  available  '  coigne  of  vantage  ' 
was  occupied  by  the  populace,  to  get  a  look  at  this 
monk ;  many  fondly  believed  they  should  see  his 
Satanic  majesty,  and  by  back-ways  and  alleys  he 
was  taken  to  his  hotel.  When  he  appeared  before 
that  council,  which  one  can  hardly  imagine  in  its 
magnificence,  it  was  as  a  single  monk  in  frock  and 
cowl  against  all  the  dignitaries  of  an  Empire  on 
which  the  sun  never  set. 

Here  he  is  confronted  with  this  simple  question  : 
''Are  those  books  yours?"  and  there  was  a  whole 
stack  of  them.  I  don't  know  what  the  simple 
soul  left  to  himself  would  have  said.  He  was  un- 
used to  the  ways  of  the  great  world.  But  his 
counsellor,  Schurff,  knew  better.  He  had  the 
lawyer's  sharpness.  He  knew  it  was  not  worth 
while  to  confess  guilty  before  it  was  proved,  and 
he  suggested  that  they  would  have  the  titles  read. 
Well  that  was  as  long  as  an  introductory  exercise 
to  read  those  titles ;  for  Luther  had  been  writing 
all  the  time,  don't  you  see  ?  And  so  they  took 
up  the  titles,  and  they  read,  and  read,  and  read. 
And  then  again,  "Were  those  his  books?" 
Yes,  they  were.  And  the  second  question  was 
this:  "  Do  you  recant?"  Well,  Luther  said  that 
some  of  those  books  treated  of  simple  gospel 
truths,  these  he  could  not  recant.  Some  were 
upon  abuses  of  religion,  them  he  could  not  recant. 


—26— 

There  were  a  few  books  there,  w^hich  were  polem- 
ical, and  in  which,  perhaps,  he  had  spoken  unad- 
visedly— possibly  he  had  used  sonae  words,  as  men 
writing  on  religion  sometimes  do,  which  were 
neither  consistent  with  religion,  nor  with  such  rules 
of  propriety,  as  ought  to  govern  gentlemen  ;  any- 
thing of  that  sort,  he  would  be  willing,  of  course 
to  take  back,  but  as  for  the  rest  he  must  have 
time  to  think. 

So  the  monk  goes  home  to  pray,  and  the  great 
diet  also  resolves  itself,  and  goes  home  to  sleep. 
Luther  pra}'s,  prays  long  and  often  during  the 
night.  He  is  very  much  beaten  down.  In  sooth, 
he  did  appear  to  very  great  advantage,  on  the 
first  day.  He  w^as  rather  dazed,  and  I  don't  won- 
der ;  it  was  Luther  against  the  world. 

But  next  morning,  refreshed,  he  goes  before  the 
Council,  and  the  day's  deliberations  begin.  After 
much  talking  to  and  fro,  which  lasts  till  nightfall, 
he  speaks  two  solid  hours  in  Latin,  then  repeats 
the  same  in  good  German.  Then  they  hear  the 
Gospel,  for  the  first  time,  many  of  them.  For 
those  who  do  not  understand  the  barbarous  Ger- 
man, it  must  be  told  in  Latin — for  their  Northern 
Majesties,  for  the  courtiers  of  the  South  Country, 
for  the  Netherlands,  and  especially  for  Italy. 
Again  he  is  asked  to  revoke.  Eck  goads  him 
with  rebukes,  accusations,  finesse,  and  then  it  is  that 
Luther  makes  the  reply,so  hackneyed  by  repetition, 
but  not  the  less  memorable  and  sublime:    "Popes 


—27— 

have  erred,  and  councils  have  erred,  and  unless  those 
things  can  be  refuted  or  contradicted  by  certain 
scripture,  my  conscience  is  bound  by  God's  word. 
Here  I  stand  ;  I  cannot  help  myself.  God  help 
me.      Amen." 

Whatever  others  who  were  outside  might  have 
thought  as  to  what  would  become  of  this  man, 
the  Diet  of  Worms  felt  that  Luther  had  con- 
quered. Charles  V.,  in  his  imperial  robes, 
had  never  seen  such  a  man  as  this  ;  the  man  in 
whom  God,  by  a  deep  conviction  of  duty,  spake. 
I  do  not  wonder  that  the  rough  soldiers,  who  stood 
at  the  door,  and  afterwards,  among  those  that 
greeted  him  on  the  street,  there  were  those  who 
were  willing  to  offer  him  a  glass  of  beer,  and  give 
him  their  congratulations,  because  he  had  done 
well ;  and  when  the  poor  man  got  home,  exhausted 
and  covered  with  perspiration,  he  should  simply 
say  :    "I  have  got  through  !   I  have  got  through!" 

This  may  be  considered  the  culmination  of 
Luther  as  a  man,  training  himself  upward.  It  is 
a  long,  steep,  rugged  and  hard  ascent,  but  he  has 
reached  the  top  of  that  eminence  on  which  victory 
perched,  and  from  which  he  can  look  over  all 
that  comes  after  him,  and  hear  these  words:  "  All 
this  territory  will  I  give  thee." 

Then  '  the  sower  went  forth  to  sow.'  He  went 
in  every  guise, — as  merchant,  traveler,  student. 
We  know  how  the  march  of  armies  has  intro- 
duced new  seeds  into  foreign  countries.      So  sol- 


diers  disseminated  the  doctrines  of  the  Reforma- 
tion. The  German  soldiers  of  Charles  V.,  and 
his  Swiss  emissaries  carried  these  new  notions  to 
the  siege  of  Milan,  and  the  sack  of  Rome.  Ref- 
ugees from  '  Bloody  Mary  '  brought  the  same  seed 
from  England,  and  sowed  it  in  the  Netherlands,  and 
parts  of  Germany.  Wherever  business  or  persecu- 
tion scattered  them,  every  where  they  went  preach- 
ing the  Reformation. 

From  this  time  on  to  the  Diet  of  Augsburg, 
where  the  Church  of  the  Reformation  presented 
its  immortal  canons,  its  twenty-one  positive  and 
its  seven  conditional  articles,  Luther's  life  was  an 
anxious,  busy  and  patient  one.  The  same  unsel- 
fish, courageous  man  !  The  same  man  w^io  by 
his  comprehension — and  I  hardly  know  by  what 
other  term  to  define  it — seemed  to  lay  hold  of 
everything  about  him.  The  hearts  of  all  men, 
apparently,  turned  towards  that  man  ;  those  who 
sympathized  with  him,  because  they  sympathized; 
and  those  who  even  disproved  of  his  course  could 
not  but  admire  his  courage  and  his  self-control. 

Following  this  crisis,  events  of  a  public  charac- 
ter crowd  so  rapidly  that  one  can  hardly  keep  the 
run  of  them.  Tetzel  burned  Luther's  theses,  and 
the  students,  the  enthusiastic  listeners  of  Luther, 
saved  Luther  the  trouble  of  burning  Tetzel's,  by 
burning  them  themselves.  And  when  the  bull  was 
fulminated  against  Luther,  and  he  was  put  under 
the  ban,  he  had  the  heroic  courage  then,  to  burn 


—29— 

the  bull,  and  to  get  up  early  in  the  morning,  nine 
o'clock  by  the  bell,  on  Monday.  He  didn't  put  it 
off  to  the  end  of  the  week,  nor  to  the  end  of  the 
day,  but  his  soul  was  full  of  courage  and  purpose, 
and  so,  early  on  Monday  morning,  he  had  it 
burned  in  the  public  square  of  Wittenberg.  That 
was  the  gauntlet  thrown  down  to  the  Emperor 
and  the  Pope.  Henceforth  there  were  two  Popes  ; 
the  Pope  that  sat  on  the  Seven  Hills  by  the  Tiber, 
and  the  little  Pope,  who  had  taken  his  seat 
on  the  banks  of  the  Elbe.  The  battle  is  set  in 
array.  The  conflict  w^ages  to  and  fro,  and  back 
and  forth,  through  many  weary  years.  Luther  is 
cfrowincr  old,  but  he  will  not  leave  the  field. 

And  now  let  us  turn  aside  to  -another  picture. 
When  Luther  left  the  Diet  of  W^orms  he  could 
not  go  home  safely,  because  it  is  very  well  known 
what  became  of  Huss  at  Constance  ;  and  his 
friends  cannot  trust  him  on  a  safe-pass,  though 
made  out  by  the  Emperor,  and  so  they  have 
taken  him  off,  and  shut  him  up  on  yonder  crag, 
in  the  Castle  of  Wartburg ;  and  there  he  sits 
down  at  once  to  his  beloved  Bible.  He  studies 
Hebrew,  and  Greek  also,  that  -  he  may  take  this 
New  Testament  and  turn  it  into  genuine  German 
for  the  German  people.  Ten  months  he  works 
at  that  task.  Afterw^ards  through  long  and  la- 
borious years  of  toil,  public  and  private,  he 
finishes  the  translation  of  the  Old  Testament  also, 
with    the   co-operation   of   such   of  his   friends  as 


—30— 

Jonas  and   Bugenhagen,   Cruziger,  and  especially 
Melancthon. 

When  he  gave  the  German  Bible  to  the  German 
people,  he  at  once  allied  himself  to  thousands  and 
tens  of  thousands  of  men  and  women,  who  were 
willing  to  die  for  the  word  of  God,  and  the  truth 
as  they  had  felt  it  in  their  own  hearts.  Why,  if 
Luther  had  done  nothing  else  but  translate  the 
Bible — giving  the  translation  to  the  German  peo- 
ple that  he  did  give  them,  he  would  deserve  to  be 
immortalized.  For  remember,  while  the  word  has 
often  been  translated,  and  will  again  often  be  trans- 
lated, for  God's  word  is  of  this  character  it  will 
never  cease  to  struggle,  until  it  has  brought  itself 
all  out  upon  the  surface,  and  made  itself  intelligi- 
ble You  cannot  shut  up  God.  Luther's  version  is 
one  of  the  seven  great  versions  of  the  world — one 
of  the  seven  wonders  of  literature,  taking  rank 
with  the  Septuagint,  the  Peshito,  the  Vulgate  and 
the  translation  of  Ulphilas,  Tyndale  and  our  own 
Authorized  version.  It  stands  on  that  high  plat- 
form. 

Moreover,  it  is  in  the  language  of  one  of  the  rul- 
ing nations  of  the  earth.  When  Luther  put  the  Bible 
into  German,  he  allied  it  with  a  tongue,  that  should 
speak  to  millions  upon  millions  of  people  for  ages 
to  come.  When  Luther  put  the  Bible  into  Ger- 
man, he  allied  it  to  a  people  who  were  warriors 
from  the  beginning,  warriors  who  brought  contempt 
and    confusion    upon   the  legions  of  Rome,  over- 


—31— 

ran  Rome  itself  and  to-day  are  the  foremost  people 
on  the  continent  of  Europe.  My  hearers,  it  was 
not  an  accident  that  Luther  translated  the  Bible 
into  the  conquering  language  of  a  conquering 
people. 

Again  the  fetters  of  a  foreign  tongue  were 
struck  off,  "  and  the  word  of  the  Lord  ran  and  was 
glorified."  The  river  of  God  though  '  full  of  water ' 
had  hitherto  flowed  in  the  channel  of  the  vulgate — 
deep  and  dark  as  Jacob's  well.  Inaccessible  to  the 
people,  and  remote  from  common  use  ;  the  Luther 
Bible  lifted  it  intonthe  sunlight.  Henceforth  its 
'living  streams' should  water  all  the  Fatherland. 
The  German  Bible  has  also  been  the  source  and 
vehicle  of  German  literature.  Germany  adopted 
the  Bible  as  its  national  text  book,  and  so  loyal 
and  laborious  have  they  been  in  their  studies  of  it, 
that  the  contributions  of  German  scholarship  to 
the  science  and  literature  of  the  scriptures,  are  more 
in  number  and  value  than  the  contributions  of  all 
other  nations  put  together. 

Now  then,  where  did  the  Reformation  have  its 
hold  upon  this  people  ?  In  the  first  place,  Luther 
was  a  German  of  the  Germans  ;  '  the  Fatherland  ' 
was  dear  to  him,  he  was  born  in  it  and  made  out 
of  it, — there  would  he  live,  there  die,  and  there 
be  buried;  in  it  all  his  affections  were  rooted.  Now, 
Germany  was  sacred  territory,  and  I  speak  ad- 
visedly ;  and  the  German  people  were  a  holy  na- 
tion in  this  matter,  as  I  shall  show  you;  and  Luther 


—32— 

was  the  man  whom  God  raised  up  to  speak  to  the 
people  in  their  own  tongue.  And  now,  if  you  will 
put  the  compasses  down  upon  the  map  of  Ger- 
many, with  one  leg  upon  Wittenberg,  and  sweep  the 
other  with  a  radius  of  a  hundred  miles,  you  shall  find 
it  will  enclose  nearly  all  the  great  cities  and  centers 
from  which  influences  went  out  in  the  Reforma- 
tion, and  which  have  become  historic.  There  are 
Torgau,  Magdeburg,  Eisleben,  Erfurt,  Zwickan 
and  Leipsic,  and  many  others  that  we  haven't 
time  to  mention,  lying  on  the  bosom  of  the  Elbe. 
It  is  a  small  territory,  but  it  is  *  the  promised  land  ;' 
it  is  the  fulcrum  over  which,  a  mighty  man  with  a 
tremendous  lever,  is  prying  up  the  nations.  The 
whole  earth  shakes  and  reels  as  the  giant  turns  in 
his  uneasy  bed.  Like  a  tidal  wave  the  Reforma- 
tion spreads  northward  into  Scandinavia,  it  flows 
eastward  into  Hungary  and  strikes  against  Bohe- 
mia, it  goes  south  to  the  Jura,  over  the  crest  of 
the  Alps,  and  the  spray  of  it  dashes  away  down  into 
Italy  itself.  It  breaks  against  the  Pyranees  ;  even 
Spain  gets  some  of  its  drops  ;  some  of  the  dry 
places  of  France  become  standing  pools.  It  sub- 
merges the  Netherlands,  it  flows  like  another  gulf 
stream  across  the  channel,  laving  the  whole  coast 
line  of  England  and  Scotland  with  its  mild  waters. 
But  after  a  while  we  look  again,  and  what  do 
our  eyes  behold  ?  We  see  that  France  is  not 
Protestant.  We  see  that  Spain  is  not  Protestant. 
Portugal  is  not  Protestant, 'Italy  is  not  Protestant, 


—33— 

and  Ireland  is  not  Protestant,  and,  away  off,  to  the 
farther  east  there  is  no  Protestantism.  There  is 
only  one  Protestant  country,  or  rather,  only  one 
Protestant  people.  Except  in  sporadic  instances, 
you  do  not  find  Protestantism  outside  of  the  Teu- 
tonic race.  The  Romanic  people  did  not  take  Prot- 
estantism then.  They  do  not  take  it  to-day.  That 
is  the  fact.  The  lines  which  the  first  fifty  years 
of  the  Reformation  established  stand  to-day. 
Conquest  after  conquest  at  the  outset  drove  back 
the  medieval  church,  but,  after  a  century  of  oscil- 
lation, both  parties  finally  rested  where  they  are 
to-day,  and  there  never  has  been  any  conquest  on 
either  side  of  that  line,  neither  for  Protestantism 
nor  for  Catholicism.  That  also  is  a  fact.  Hence, 
I  say,  this  was  the  Holy  Land.  It  was  in  Prussia, 
(Saxony  was  in  the  center  of  this  continental  em- 
pire) but  it  was  in  Prussia,  the  Prussia  of  to-day, 
that  the  church  planted  her  standard  then,  and 
set  it  up  for  Protestantism.  There  rules  to-day 
the  only  Protestant  Kaiser,  and  Unser  Lidher 
speaks  in  the  language  of  that  land  and  people. 

Now  observe,  yonder  lies  Scotland.  Scotland 
had  its  own  reformer.  It  was  a  reformation  not 
unlike  that  of  Germany — a  popular  uprising.  It 
was  headed  by  a  man  not  unlike  Luther  in  cour- 
age and  convictions,  but  he  worked  on  a  small  terri- 
tory, yet  not  unsuccessfully,  for  he  wrought 
among  this  same  Teutonic  people,  and  they  took 
the  Reformation.     The  northern  part  of  Holland, 


—34— 

where  this  same  blood  had  spread  among  the  pop- 
ulation, also  became  Protestant,  and  so  intensely 
Protestant,  that  it  fought  the  whole  empire,  and 
Alva,  the  implacable,  could  not  burn  it  out,  nor 
destroy  it  by  the  sword.  Every  time  it  touched 
the  earth  in  its  humiliation,  it  rose  again  with 
new  power,  and  vindicated  the  race  among  which, 
it  was  planted.  Sweden  and  Norway  and  Den- 
mark and  Iceland  are  Protestant  to-day.  But 
what  has  become  of  Belgium  ?  Of  Bohemia? 
They  were  not  Teutonic,  neither  are  they  Protes- 
tant.   This  also  is  a  very  great  and  grand  question. 

Now  then,  go  back  to  another  point.  The 
monument  at  Eisleben,  erected  to  Luther,  has 
three  panels  ;  one  of  them  is  a  domestic  scene, 
another  is  Luther  at  the  Leipsic  disputation,  and 
the  third  is  Luther  translating  the  Bible.  These 
are  three  characteristic  things  in  Luther's  life. 
I  have  spoken  to  you  about  the  Bible,  which  he 
laid  upon  the  hearts  of  the  Teutonic  people,  and 
as  we  saw,  they  have  kept  it  ever  since  very  close 
to  their  hearts. 

Now  Luther  was  also  a  disputant.  He  loved 
controversy,  yet  when  he  went  upon  the  polemic 
stage  at  Leipsic,  he  had  a  nosegay  in  his  hand. 
It  is  a  pleasant  little  thought  that  this  man 
weighed  down  with  such  great  cares  of  church 
and  state,  could  not  forget,  and  did  not  forget  '  the 
flowers  of  the  field.'  That  he  loved  those  things, 
recalls  the  wisdom  of  Solomon,  and  of  one  who  was 


—35— 

wiser  than  Solomon.  And  when  I  find  him  writinrr 
to  his  friend  at  Nuremburg  for  garden-seeds,  and 
sending  to  Erfurt  for  radishes,  and  Httle  things  of 
this  sort,  I  find  this  man  Luther  is  keeping  his  heart 
warm  and  tender,  by  laying  it  close  by  the  side  of 
everyday  matters.  He  is  not  too  good  nor  great 
for  common  uses. 

The  panel  which  represents  him  as  a  disputant 
is  one  that  brings  him  oftenest  before  us.  Luther 
was  a  good  fighter.  There  was  much  fighting  to 
be  done ;  somebody  must  do  it,  and  Luther  had  a 
stomach  for  it.  He  had  that  irrepressible,  tumul- 
tuous temper,  which  he  got  from  his  father,  and 
from  which  he  suffered  so  much.  But  it  was  "  the 
northern  iron  and  steel",  which  God  wrought  into 
his  soul  for  a  fit  purpose,  and  now  these  are  the 
days  of  his  warfare;  for  "  the  Lord  has  taught  his 
hands  to  war  and  his  fingers  to  fight."  Now 
that  he  must  meet  the  enemies  of  truth  and 
righteousness,  you  want  a  fighting  man ;  that  is,  a 
man  that  has  courage — not  to  draw  the  sword  of 
persecution ;  and  let  it  be  spoken  here,  to  the 
eternal  credit  of  Luther  and  Lutheranism,  that 
Luther  never  drew  the  sword  and  never  coun- 
selled the  drawing  of  it  for  such  a  purpose.  He 
believed  in  "the  sword  of  the  spirit,  which  is  the 
wcn'd  of  God."  Amid  the  tumults  of  the  empire, 
with  wars  and  divers  plottings,  and  all  sorts  of 
combinations,  even  against  his  Elector  and  against 
his  own  State,  he  urged  the  citizens  of  Wittenberg 


-36- 

to  bear  arms  under  the  empire  against  Turkey — ■ 
but  not  to  go  to  war  among  themselves.  This  was 
Luther.  But  he  was  ' '  a  man  of  war  from  his 
youth"  notwithstanding  that.  That  is,  he  had 
convictions,  and  for  these  convictions  he  was 
ready  to  do  battle  in  every  possible  way,  except 
the  shedding  of  human  blood.  Yet,  in  self- 
defence  of  the  truth,  he  was  willing  to  have  even 
that  shed. 

Luther  was  also  a  good  hater.  His  enemies 
were  not  abstract,  but  concrete  antagonists.  He 
hated  the  Pope,  he  hated  the  Jews,  and  he  hated 
the  Sacramentarians — not  simply  their  opinions, 
and  something  of  personal  animosity  warmed  his 
controversial  blood. 

He  is  mad,  'tis  true     *     *     * 
And  pity  'tis,  'tis  true. 

And  when  you  have  this  man  armed  thoroughly, 
armed  rather  dexterously,  there  were  very  few 
men  in  that  day,  very  few  individual  men,  who 
were  willing  to  meet  Martin  Luther  in  a  dispute. 
There  were  men  that  knew  more  Greek,  that 
knew  more  Hebrew,  more  theology,  than  he  did. 
I  guess  the  mild  Melancthon — the  woman  of  the 
Reformation — I  rather  think  he  knew  more,  both 
of  Greek  and  theology.  Also,  there  were  men 
who  knew  more  of  other  things,  but  there  was  not 
any  one  man  in  Germany,  that  could  use  as  many 
weapons,  at  the  same  time,  as  Martin  Luther. 
He  was  a  dangerous  man  to  meet  in  a  disputation 


—37— 

because  he  not  only  had  convictions,  but  he  had 
arguments  ;  and  where  he  generally  had  the  ad- 
vantage of  these  men  with  whom  he  fell  into  dis- 
pute, was  that  in  every  disputation  he  would 
always  come  back  to  the  Holy  Scriptures.  As 
he  came  back  to  them  at  the  Diet  of  Worms,  with 
*  Here  I  stand;  I  cannot  do  otherwise.'  At  the 
conference  of  Marburg,  when  Zwingle  and  Oeco- 
lampadius  came  up  there  to  talk  about  the  sacra- 
ment, Luther  is  said  to  have  written  on  the  table, 
on  whose  opposite  sides  the  contestants  sat,  the 
words.  Hoc  est  corpus!  This  is  my  body;  this 
is  my  body.  That  was  the  Scripture  ;  so  he  read 
it.  He  did  not  understand  it.  He  tried  to  get  a 
glimpse  of  its  dim  outlines.  But  whatever  it  said 
to  him,  it  said  to  him  with  all  the  authority  of  a 
direct  communication  from  God,  and  he  could  not 
release  himself  from  it. 

And  now  follow  him  through  his  life,  and  you 
will  find  that,  it  is  true  as  he  said,  the  thing  that 
he  loved  above  all  others  was  God's  word,  and 
next  to  that  his  wife.  You  have  perhaps  seen  the 
doggerel  rhyme — I  don't  know  where  the  distich 
comes  from,  but  I  have  seen  it  : 

•'Gottes  Wordt  und  Luthers  lehr 
Vergehet  nun  und  nimmer  mehr." 

"God's  Word  and  Luther's  teachings  are 
eternal."  I  suppose  it  may  sound  conceited  and 
presumptuous  ;  but  he  built  upon  the  apostles  and 
prophets,  and,  building   upon    them,    he  felt  that 


-38- 

wherever  they  went  and  endured,  his  word  would 
also  go  and  endure.  Luther's  loyalty  to  God's 
word  had  in  it  something  almost  romantic.  He 
was  inseparable  from  it.  Where  you  find  it,  you 
find  him,  and  where  you  find  him,  you  find  it. 
"Thy  word  have  I  hid  in  my  heart."  A  single 
word  bound  him,  as  witness  the  Zwinglian  contro- 
versy, and  the  Landgrave  bigamy,  but  his  views 
on  the  canon  were  liberal  to  a  degree. 

Now,  then,  respecting  this  good  man's  home- 
life  ;  why,  it  would  be  a  very  pleasant  thing  to 
while  over  it.  It  would  comfort  your  hearts  to 
find  at  how  many  points  he  touches  us  here.  Go 
into  his  house,  and  there  is  music  and  dancing. 
Here  are  the  children  climbing  up  on  his  knees, 
and  clambering  all  over  him  ;  one  to  show  him 
this  and  the  other  one  to  show  him  that.  And 
here  is  the  good  man  with  his  lute.  He  learned 
to  play  that  when  he  was  lame  ;  when  he  couldn't 
do  anything  else  but  that.  He  could  not  afford  to 
be  idle  even  then.  Here  is  the  good  man  playing, 
making  music,  to  the  melody  that  there  really  was 
in  his  great,  sad  heart.  I  think  it  is  true  what  he 
says  in  his  "Table-Talk" — I  understand  it  to  be 
so — that  refrain  which  has  been  dragged  out  with 
intent  to  disparage  him  : 

"  Wer  nicht  liebt  Weib,  Weill  und  Gesang, 
Derbleibt  ein  Narr  sein  Lebenlang." 

Which  maybe  Englished  in  prose,  "That  the 
man  who  does  not  love  wine,  and  music  and  woman, 


^39— 

is  a  fool,  out  and  out,  and  as  long  as  he  lives." 
Now,  I  think  that,  upon  the  whole,  the  words  may 
stand  as  true.  You  know  what  Shakspeare  says 
about  music: 

"  The  man  that  hath  no  music  in  himself, 
Nor  is  not  moved  with  concord  of  sweet  sounds, 
Is  fit  for  treasons,  stratagems  and  spoils  ; 

*  *  *  *  * 

And  his  affections,  dark  as  Erebus. 
Let  no  such  man  be  trusted." 

Luther  could  be  "trusted,"  if  he  could  be,  on 
the  score  of  his  love  of  music  ;  and  that  he  loved 
his  wife — surely  that  must  be  always  orthodox 
among  all  of  us,  who  love  the  charities  and  purity, 
and  the  nameless  and  indefinable  charms  and  securi- 
ties of  home.  Home  is  one  of  the  words,  which  is 
particularly  "at  home"  among  the  Teutonic 
races.  It  is  the  one  strong  word  that  is  in  the 
mouth  of  every  German  ;  and  whatever  you  may 
think  of  his  ways  and  means  of  living  here,  or  any 
other  where,  fraii  unci  kinder  ^x it  always  included 
in  his  idea  of  'having  a  good  time.'  And  as  to 
luine,  I  don't  know  that  I  ought  to  be  allowed  to 
say  anything  on  that  subject;  but  as  this  is  an 
occasion,  which  will  not  occur  again,  for  four  hun- 
dred years,  there  won't  be  any  trouble,  I  trust.  I 
remember  that  Luther  says  of  a  certain  place  where 
he  used  to  get  wine,  "It  was  good  wine;  there 
was  no  garlic  in  it. "  And  that  the  beer  of  Torgau 
was  not  good,  for  they  had  put  cobblers'  wax  into 
it  ;  and  he  was  down  on  adulterations  of  this  kind. 


—40— 

He  wanted  his  beer  *'  straight  " — he  was  a  straight 
man.  He  wanted  his  wine  unadulterated,  as  he  was 
an  honest  man ;  and  if  we  must  drink  wine,  we  all 
agree  that,  to  be  good  it  ought  to  be  pure.  Now, 
then,  on  this  question,  let  me  say  that  Luther  was 
an  out-and-out  temperance  man.  It  was  one  of  the 
griefs  of  his  heart,  that  the  people  of  Wittenberg, 
as  they  increased  in  wealth,  indulged  themselves 
in  excess  of  drinking.  It  was  a  German  fault 
then  ;  it  has  not  improved  since.  He  complained 
of  this,  especially  in  respect  to  his  last  ruler,  that 
on  public  occasions,  he  would  indulge  himself  at 
the  table  beyond  what  was  prudent,  comely  or 
healthful;  and  yet  the  Reformer  said,  *'  I  do  not 
bargain  away  my  liberty."  I  rather  think  that 
this  man  was  built  up  square  from  the  ground  ; 
and  while  we  may  differ  from  him,  as  he  some- 
times differed  from  himself,  we  must  agree  that, 
upon  the  whole : 

"  He  was  a  man,  take  him  all  in  all  : 
You  shall  not  look  upon  his  like  again." 

In  his  courage,  in  his  integrity,  in  his  whole- 
souledness,  in  his  generosity — a  generosity  which 
drew  around  his  table,  so  hospitable  in  its  spread, 
always  somebody:  were  it  poor  boarding  students, 
curious  travelers,  or  divers  learned  theologians. 
You  never  knew  a  small-souled,  close-fisted,  tight- 
skinned  man  to  have  any  magnetic  power.  No 
covetous  man  was  ever  a  people's  idol — they  love 
generosity,  and  Luther  was  generous  everywhere; 


—41  — 

the  recipient  of  many  gifts,  he  gave  more  than  he 
got.  He  embraced  in  his  arms  the  hearts  of  all 
who  came  near  him. 

Well,  perhaps  one  had  better  not  say  too  much 
upon  this  subject ;  yet  will  I  venture  one  remark 
more.  Luther  was  a  genius.  He  had  a  creative 
intellect.  When  a  man  like  Luther  is  raised  up, 
he  does  work,  which  gives  work  to  subordinate 
men  for  ages.  Now  we  always  mention  Luther 
and  Knox  and  Calvin  and  Zwingle  together  as 
reformers — and  sometimes  Erasmus  and  Melanc- 
thon.  But  Luther  is  really  the  only  man  that 
constitutes  a  center  around  which  all  the  others 
harmoniously  find  their  obits  of  revolution. 

Luther  was  a  man  of  ideas,  a  man  of  convic- 
tions, and  a  man  of  affections.  My  hearers,  the 
motive  powers  of  this  world  are  not  abstract  ideas. 
The  motive  powers  of  this  world  are  the  affec- 
tions. And,  when  I  look  over  a  congregation 
like  this,  and  think  of  the  little  grains  of  affection 
that  are  hidden  in  every  heart,  as  I  go  from  one 
to  another  up  and  down  these  pews :  these 
mothers,  these  sisters,  these  husbands,  these 
daughters,  these  sons,  these  sweethearts ;  when  I 
think  of  all  this  that  underlies  society,  I  know 
where  its  motive  powers  are.  These  little  com- 
binations of  power,  that  are  hidden  in  -the  hearts 
of  tens  of  thousands  of  people  in  every  town 
and  city  have  a  lifting  power  like  unto  that  of  the 
ten  thousand  times  ten  thousand   screws,  which  a 


—42— 

shrewd  engineer  put  under  Chicago,  and  with  which 
he  raised  it  up  bodily  to  a  safer  and  sounder  and 
healthier  level.  So  these  affections,  hidden 
through  our  homes  and  communities,  are  a  power 
which  lifts  up  men  and  women  into  the  sunlight 
of  a  charity,  '  which  believeth  all  things  and  hopeth 
all  things  and  endureth  all  things,  and  which  never 
faileth.'  But  Luther's  heart  was  as  large  as  a 
mountain,  and  from  it  there  streamed  out,  in  the 
fullness  of  his  soul,  good  will  towards  his  dear 
fatherland,  and  towards  all  whom  he  could  bring 
within  reach  of  the  srosoel   of  God  and   his  dear 

O  J. 

Son. 

And  when  that  good  man,  after  all  conflicts  had 
pretty  well  passed,  went  on  his  visitation  through 
the  provinces  of  his  Prince  to  set  up  churches, 
and  provide  an  evangelical  ministry — that  mis- 
sion was  one  of  the  saddest,  and  yet  the  pleasant- 
est  you  can  contemplate.  It  recalls  Paul's  mission 
tours  through  Asia  Minor:  preaching  the  gospel 
in  the  synagogues  and  gathering  the  little  clusters 
of  believers  into  household  churches  and  neigh- 
borhood congregations,  where  the  seed  of  divine 
truth  might  be  preserved.  It  was  like  the  work, 
which  John  Wesley  did,  when  he  went  over 
England  orc^anizins^  his  class-meetinsfs  and  scatter- 
ing  the  seeds  of  Methodism  in  all  that  land.  So 
Luther  went  from  village  to  village,  and  oh  the 
ignorance,  the  superstition,  the  poverty  he  en- 
countered !      Priests  who  hardly  knew  enough  to 


—43— 

read  the  Creed  or  the  Lord's  Prayer  intelligently. 
People  who  were  Christians,  and  who  yet  did  not 
believe  that  they  could  spare  the  time  to  commit 
the  Lord's  Prayer — it  was  too  long.  There  he 
went  and  worked  like  a  priest,  like  a  city  mission- 
ary— down  in  the  slums,  among  the  poor,  among 
the  lowly.  But  he  was  building  a  pyramid,  the 
lowest  strata  of  which  might  rest  upon  the  ground, 
yet  its  sloping  sides  should  terminate  in  an  apex 
that  was  far  up  in  the  sunlight — a  pyramid  which 
should  stand  forever. 

Now  my  Christian  friends,  w^e  cannot  afford  to 
forget  such  men  as  Luther.  They  are  God's  gift 
to  the  human  race.  They  come  only  once  in  a 
great  while.  They  come  for  a  special  purpose, 
and  when  God  finds  the  work,  he  finds  the  work- 
man. And  so  when  the  hour  had  struck  for  a  new 
movement  in  religion,  he  called  for  the  man  ;  and 
this  man  came. 

But  Luther  was  not  a  revolutionist.  He  was 
a  conservative  man,  strange  as  that  may  seem.  I 
admit  that  his  Reformation  in  its  results  bordered 
close  on  revolution.  But  he  stood  out  staunchly 
for  the  old  paths,  and  it  was  simply  his  attempt  to 
bring  back  God's  people  to  the  immovable  foun- 
dation of  God's  word,  of  which  they  had  lost  sight 
because  of  the  human  debris,  which  now  for  a 
long  time  covered  it  over,  that  brought  the  sword. 

Luther  was  not  a  theologian.  We  do  not  think 
of    him   .as   such.       When   we  speak    of  this  re- 


—44— 

former,  he  does  not  come  before  us  in  the  charac- 
ter of  a  theologian.  Melancthon  does,  and  Cal- 
vin does  and  so  does  Zwingle.  But  Luther  was 
"the  Reformer."  He  was  the  great,  imperial 
genius,  who  made  work  for  all  these  other  kingly 
men,  and  set  them  a  field  in  which  they  could 
work.  Luther  was  the  father  of  a  religion,  of  a 
religion,  I  say,  which  Calvin  was  not.  Calvin  was 
the  author  of  a  theological  system, — a  series  of 
speculations  and  formulae  set  forth  in  the  most 
logical  and  classical  and  clearest  of  styles.  A 
work  laid  up  by  a  master  mind,  all  the  stones 
hewn  ''after  the  similitude  of  a  palace,"  carried 
up  plumb  and  smooth  to  the  top,  and  roofed  in  ; 
of  solidest  workmanship  and  of  solidest  material. 
But  it  was  human.  He  built  it  evenly,  if  you 
please,  from  the  corner-stone  to  the  cap-stone,  and 
put  all  his  skill  upon  it,  and  all  his  knowledge 
into  it.  A  very  cathedral  of  thought.  But 
though  built  so  well,  it  was  after  all  but  a  human 
structure,  and  the  envious  tooth  of  time  had 
sworn  to  bring  it  down.  As  the  old  Greek  said  : 
time  is  envious  of  men's  work. 

Luther  built  no  structure  of  this  kind.  The 
Reformation  was  not  a  construction  of  his  mind. 
He  planted  trees,  shade  trees  and  fruit  trees,  the 
olive  and  the  vine.  They  might  die,  but  they  had 
in  them  the  seeds  of  succession  ;  and  they  did  die, 
but  they  had  their  successors,  and  the  shade  of 
these  goodly  trees  should  be  like   the  sjiadow  of 


—45— 

God  in  the  wilderness,  it  should  journey  across  the 
desert  for  the  guidance  of  the  Lord's  people  and 
for  their  protection. 

It  is  a  rather  sad  thought  to  me,  but  I  will  indi- 
cate it  to  you  to  show  the  difference  between  the 
man  of  ideas  and  the  man  of  systems.  I  said  Cal- 
vinism was  not  a  reformation,  neither  was  it  a  re- 
ligion ;  it  was  a  theory,  a  working  theory  to  be 
sure,  but  still  a  theory.  Being  a  series  of  abstract 
propositions  which  sought  so  to  co-ordinate  all 
scripture  teachings,  so  that  students  of  theology 
might  read  and  refer  them  intelligently.  But  look 
at  what  it  is,  to  show  the  want  of  vitality  there  was 
in  it.  Where  is  the  intense  Calvinism  of  the 
Synod  of  Dort?  Where  is  it  in  the  Holland  of 
to-day?  Where  to-day  is  the  puritanism  of  New 
England,  as  seen  in  the  Westminister  Assembly's 
confession,  and  where  is  the  Calvinism  of  old  Eng- 
land, except  in  her  thirty-nine  articles  ?  What  has 
befallen  the  Calvinism  of  Scotland?  Modified  and 
withered  and  adulterated,  until  we  are  afraid  it  is 
worse  than  Romanism,  because  it  is  rationalism. 
Where  is  the  Calvinism  of  Geneva?  of  the  south 
side  of  the  Alps  ?  And  the  Calvinism  that  was 
left  in  France  ?  Europe  says  it  is  not  in  me,  and 
America  says  it  is  not  in  me.  These  are  human 
conceptions.  They  change,  they  wear  out.  But 
this  living  eternal  word  of  God,  with  power  to 
reproduce  itself  in  men's  hearts  and  lives,  never 
can  wear  out.      While  one  generation  passes  away 


-46- 

another  comes  to  be  instructed  out  of  this  word. 
Here  are  the  trees  that  bear  their  fruit,  in  all  the 
seasons  of  the  year,  and  through  the  centuries, — 
''for  the  word  of  the  Lord  abideth  forever." 

Now,  then,  respecting  Luther,  I  may  say,  in  con- 
clusion, that  his  name  is  before  the  worH,  some- 
what as  Schiller's  Bell,  in  that  most  beautiful  of  his 
poems.  It  has  been  lifted  out  of  the  pit,  freed 
from  the  mold  and  burnished.  Behold,  it  rises 
up  greater  and  grander,  until  it  is  lodged  in  the 
belfry — way  above  the  turmoil,  and  strife,  and 
trouble  of  the  world  in  the  streets  below — speaking 
peace  and  quiet  to  men  ; — with  heaven  for  its  tent 
— the  blue  outstretched  heaven — neighbor  to  the 
thunder,  w^hose  voice  it  shall  echo.  There  it 
hangs ;  swinging  with  melodious  sound ;  waft- 
ing it  away  off-  to  the  north,  away  off  to  the 
south,  and  ringing  out  in  all  directions  a  word 
of  peace  a  word  of  hope,  a  word  of  consola- 
tion ;  speaking  to  the  earth  below  of  the  heavens 
above,  and  drawing  all  men's  hearts  from  this 
lower  evil  world  to  that  upper  and  better  country. 
So  methinks  God  has  hung  the  name  of  Luther  in 
the  belfry  of  the  world.  What  shall  be  said  of 
Luther,  that  he  was  great?  He  bore  one  special 
mark  of  greatness:  his  sublime  discontent.  Men 
that  are  satisfied  with  things  as  they  are,  are  never 
great  men,  nor  useful.  They  live  on  the  accumu- 
lation of  the  past,  and  leave  nothing  for  posterity. 
The  men  that  leave  most  are  the  greatest.     Luther 


—47— 

left  a  large  legacy — it  is  far  from  being  exhaus- 
ted yet.  Protestantism  has  a  future — but  let  her 
beware  of  looking  backward,  or  merely  erecting 
trophies.  May  the  noble  discontent  of  her  leader 
dwell  in  her,  as  it  dwelt  in  him.  And  now  let  us 
turn,  and  see  his  sun  go  down. 

Luther  went  to  Eisleben,  where  he  was  born, — to 
die.  He  went  there  on  an  errand  of  mercy.  He 
went  to  mediate  between  the  Counts  of  Mansfield, 
sovereigns  of  his  dear  little  fatherland,  and  the 
beatitude  of  the  peacemaker  went  with  him.  While 
doing  this  good  work,  the  good  man  died  and  w^as 
gathered  to  his  fathers,  and  there  was  great 
mourning  made  for  him.  They  bore  forth  his  re- 
mains with  many  honors,  with  outriders  and 
heralds  and  noblemen  and  footmen.  They  car- 
ried them  down  to  Wittenberg,  that  they  might 
rest  in  the  city  of  his  labors,  and,  that  being  dead, 
he  might  continue  to  speak  as  he  has,  through  all 
the  centuries  already  flown,  and  those  that  shall 
yet  flow.  Let  him  rest  in  peace  in  his  honored 
grave,  where  we  drop  our  tears  of  gratitude  for 
what  he  has  done.  He  was  a  Protestant,  so  are 
we.  He  was  a  Christian  who  trusted  in  God  for 
salvation,  so,  I  trust  and  hope,  are  we.  "  He  rests 
from  his  labors,  and  his  works  do  follow  him." 
God  grant  us  the  same  honor,  and  the  same 
repose. 


DATE  DUE 


ic.  .  dri  doaress  delivered  in 


1    1012  00073  9047 


■M#: 


